Sales Qualification: IN, OUT AND SHAKE IT ALL OUT ABOUT.

Sales Qualification: IN, OUT AND SHAKE IT ALL OUT ABOUT.

How often do you find that you are spending too much time with prospects that have no budget or are looking to buy things next year or not at all.  Are you jealous of other people’s sales conversation rates?

There are a couple of game that you will have all played usually with our children, that can help, in your endeavours to improve your time management and sales conversation. These are ‘20 questions’ or ‘Who am I’ the basic premise of both of these is the same, to establish who or what you are from asking a series of questions. By asking relevant and related questions you can devise either the nature of the object or the identity of the person. In the case of your sales prospect you can establish whether they are appropriate and real.

The most important aspects of any sales process is to establish that the lead is relevant and fits your profile, this being the case and only if this is the case the process can proceed and the time be invested for you get your order. This of course requires that you understand what the ideal profile of a customer is and that you have a set of criteria that your perfect prospect fits. Therefore this is the same premise but opposite of those games; you know the answers and need to devise the questions to establish the perfect prospect. You should have a standard set of criteria for each lead.

In my view it is most important to qualify things out at the earliest opportunity, you spend more time and it takes longer to lose deals than it does to win them. As a ‘sale maker’ you only have time to spend on people who have money and are going to spend within your ‘quota period’ be that month, quarter or year. Clearly I am assuming that you know the Criteria.

IN: We have a budget for a ￡ 1000,000 and we have to be up and running by Christmas. I would like you to meet the MD at the earliest opportunity for him to explain things to you and give you his vision. We have done a lot of research and believe there is only yours and one other solution that meets our needs, we have prepared a detailed specification for you to work too and are keen on your suggestions to improve it.

OUT: We are not sure what we are going to spend but clearly we will go with the cheapest quote, not sure when we will be able to get things installed maybe before Christmas maybe 1st or 2nd quarter next year. There is no need to meet my boss I have full authority he will just see the final quotation. We have had a quick look around not really sure what we want but i am sure you can do all that work for us.

SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT:  I suggest that if you haven’t a clear view of your prefect prospect and haven’t got your qualifying questions then you start putting this together, agree this and apply it to all of the prospects in your funnel. Qualify out quickly and concentrate on the ones that pass the tests. Based on the results, you will understand whether marketing are producing appropriate leads (if not it can be refined or aligned), whether the sales team understand who it is they should be selling too (maybe some training needed), you will find that the first time you will not know the answers so you have a reason to call your prospect to find the answers. You may find an independent view helpful during this process someone with no emotional attachments and history in your business to act as a harsh enforcer. When this is all done you will have a smaller pipeline but far more realistic and you will have a higher conversion rate and far more time to spend on finding new deals that you can win together with an action plan to refine and align your sales and marketing approach.

Footnote: Do not believe everything that you are told, if it doesn’t sound right or your instincts / experience says that it doesn’t stack up. Then check with more questions or ask someone else. I have always worked on the premise that unless I get told the same thing twice by 2 different people it cannot be correct.